Sir Thomas HOBY

Born: 1530, probably at Leominster, Herefordshire, England

Died: 13 Jul 1566, Paris, France

Father: William HOBY of Leominster

Mother: Catherine VAUGHN

Married: Elizabeth COOKE (B. Russell) ABT 1469, Shurland, Kent, England

Children:

1. Edward HOBY (Sir) (See his Biography)

2. Elizabeth HOBY

3. Anne HOBY

4. Thomas Posthumous HOBY (Sir)

© Copyright of David Nash Ford.

Biography reproduced by kind permission of the Royal Berkshire History Website.

Sir Thomas Hoby was the second son of William Hoby of Leominster in Herefordshire, by his second wife, Catherine, dau. of John Vaughan. He matriculated at Cambridge, from St. John's College, in 1545. It is sometimes asserted that he also spent some time at Oxford. He subsequently visited France, Italy and other foreign countries and “was many ways well furnished with learning and very expert in knowledge of divers tongues”.

By his marriage, on 27 Jun 1558, to Elizabeth, third daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke of Gidea Hall in Essex, he had two sons, Edward and Thomas Posthumus (both subsequently knighted), and two daughters, Elizabeth and Anne, who died within a few days of each other in Feb 1571.

On 9 Mar 1566, Thomas was knighted at Greenwich (Kent) and was sent as Ambassador to France at the end of the same month. At the time of his landing in Calais Haven, on 9 Apr, a soldier at the town gate shot through the English flag in two places. Hoby demanded redress for the insult and obtained it, after some delay, but he was not permitted to view the new fortifications.

He died in Paris on 13 Jul 1566 and was buried in the church of Bisham in Berkshire, a manor he had inherited from his half-brother, Sir Phillip, in 1558. His widow erected a superb renaissance-style monument to the two there, and probably brought sculptors from France to carve the white marble effigies in complete armour.

Hoby was author of several transla­tions, including 'The Gratulation of.…M. Martin Bucer....unto the church of England for the restitution of Christ’s Religion, and his Answer unto the two railing epistles of Steven, Bishop of Winchester, concerning the unmarried state of priests and cloisterers,' (1549) and 'The Courtier of Count Baldessar Castilio, divided into four books' (1561). He also left a manuscript diary.

Sources:

Dictionary of National Biography" (1891).

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